In handwritten notes of my grandfather
Raúl Faget, he refers to two paintings that in 1960, once the show in Paris was
over, mi grandmother, Margarita Figari lent to Federico Vogelius, to be
exhibited in Galería Rubbers of Buenos Aires; they were Gato (folk dance) and
Gato de cuatro (also folk dance). When Vogelius himself brought them back, he
was accompanied by a pretended buyer who left a small down payment for the two
paintings. But the man never came back, and Vogelius said it was because he had
had business failures.

For
some reason, my grandparents, always according to those notes, checked the
paintings, and they suspected they were fakes.Posed to Vogelius, he agreed, blamed
the owner of Galería Rubbers, and promised to solve the problem. But he never
returned or communicated. So far for the notes.

It
is evident that my grandparents blocked themselves in, and they didn’t even
talk about it with my uncle, their eldest son, and the paintings were stored
away.

Eventually,
the authentic versions appeared: Gato is in a museum in Miami, after having
been sold at Sotheb y’s in 1988 (shall we bet who sent it there?), and Gato de
cuatro in the collection of Ms. Lita Ruccio, widow of Vogelius, in Buenos Aires.

Gato de cuatro AUTHENTIC FAKE

Gato AUTHENTIC FAKE

My grandmother’s five siblings were
duped the same way as herself, and probably more, collectors from Argentina.

After
so many years, it is impossible to know how many pictures were substituted to
my grandmother by Vogelius. My brother has the fake “Gato”, and a cousin has “Gato
de cuatro”. Y suppose all of my grandmother’s heirs were harmed. I have three
paintings of the smallest size, but there isn’t a mean of finding out when they
were substituted: one or two of the authentic ones have been in a collection in
NY. The same happened with many of those small paintings belonging to different
owners, and I have a suspicion it was done at the beginning, as some sort of rehearsal.

3 small fakes

I had slept in a bed at my
grandmother’s for six years, and over the bed hung a Candombe. I inherited it
from my mother, and it was the first painting I ever sold, believing it was
authentic, but it was a fake. Years later, the eldest daughter of Vogelius sent
the authentic one for auction in Montevideo, the fake was destroyed in my
presence (keeping proof of its existence), and exaggerating my responsibility I
compensated the last owner of the fake one.

As
an anecdote: the widow of the first buyer of the fake one once visited me, only
to let me know how much they had enjoyed that painting. I didn’t spill the beans
to her.

Candombe AUTHENTIC FAKE

Thanks to all my life in touch with the work of
Figari, and mostly because of my work of ove 30 years, these mistakes shouldn’t
happen again, even as improbable it is possible that someone might one day
paint figaris better than Figari, but if my archive advances enough, the authentification
will become more mechanic, authomatic..............................................................................................................................................................